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Chapter80 writes "At noon today (Eastern Standard Time), the long dead ORDB spam identification system began returning false positives as a way to get sleeping users to remove the ORDB query from their spam filters. The net effect: all mail is blocked on servers still configured to use the ORDB service, which was taken out of commission in December of 2006. So if you're not getting any mail, check your spam filter configuration!"

N0N0B4dD0g (1159203) writes "Macworld reports that computer and electronics retailer CompUSA announced on Friday that it would start winding down its retail operations after being acquired by an investment firm, which is looking to sell the company's business and assets."Link to Original Source

An anonymous reader writes "Mexican telephone and retail magnate Carlos Slim, in a rare defeat, will exit the U.S. consumer electronics market, shutting the last 100 CompUSA Inc. stores after sinking about $2 billion into the business.
Gordon Brothers Group, a Boston-based retail store liquidator, will oversee a piecemeal sale of the Dallas-based business, the company said in a statement. Financial terms were not disclosed. Stores will remain open through year-end under the supervision of Gordon Brothers, which will also negotiate the sale of real estate and other assets. Two law firms were hired to represent creditors, CompUSA said."

raddan (519638) writes "Jun-ichiro "itojun" Itoh Hagino passed away on October 29, 2007 at the age of 37. Details are light, but there's a brief thread going over at undeadly. itojun was probably best known for his work on the KAME IPv6 stack which will benefit us for years to come. itojun, you will be missed!"

RZG (27666) writes "Two people were killed and 4 were injured during a "cold fire test" of the motor for SpaceShipTwo. This obviously is a setback for Virgin Galactic and the non-government space community in general. "Aerial video of the blast aftermath showed a charred and twisted flatbed trailer attached to a truck cab with a large silver tank next to it. Large pieces of debris appeared to be strewn for hundreds of yards from the center.""Link to Original Source

Some cater to adult sites, others to political dissent, but all to free speech in some form or other. As Voltaire supposedly said, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.""Link to Original Source

n0g (621781) writes "In a recent submission to Bugtraq, Larry Gill of Guidance Software refutes (successfully or not, you decide) some bug reports for the forensic analysis product EnCase® Forensic Edition. The refutation is interesting, but one comment raises an important privacy issue: When talking about perps creating "loops" in NTFS directories to hide data, Gill says, "The purposeful hiding of data by the subject of an investigation is in itself important evidence and there are many scenarios where intentional data cloaking provides incriminating evidence, even if the perpetrator is successful in cloaking the data itself."

That begs the question, if one "cloaks" data by encrypting it, say, exactly what incriminating evidence does that provide? And how important is that evidence compared to the absence of anything else found that was incriminating? If you find an encrypted hard drive on my system, that doesn't mean there's pr0n in there, that's just to hold my bank records. No, seriously."

Upgrade versions of Windows Vista Home Basic, Premium, and Starter Edition will not install on any PC unless Windows XP or Windows 2000 is already on the machine in question. In years previous, upgrade versions of Windows could be installed on any PC. If a PC did not have an older version of Windows installed, users could provide an older installation CD of Windows for verification. After dropping a qualifying CD in the CD-ROM drive, the installation routine would verify the disc and you'd be on your way. With this approach, one could use an "upgrade" copy of Windows to lay a new Windows install on a computer.

I was already waiting before trying out Vista, but as a computer enthusiast I've usually gone the way of buying the "upgrade" version, and doing the clean install from that. Now I'm expected to purchase the full version of Vista? How often has a standing upgrade from one version of Windows to another actually worked?"

Smaran writes "BitThief is a BitTorrent client developed in Zurich, Switzerland that manages to download torrents without uploading at all. It constantly pretends to be a newly arrived peer that doesn't have any bits to upload. It also doesn't prioritise bits and takes whatever it can get. Torrentfreak writes that such a client could be extremely harmful to BitTorrent swarms and hopes that it will be quickly banned from trackers. Since it's written in Java, it can be launched on any platform."

Daniel writes "David Harris of Pegasus Mail (PMail) has announced that he is giving up development of his famous Mail Client that has accompanied so many from Netware times to now. He has spoken out in favour of Open Source in the past but has not dared to take that route because he wanted to continue make a living out of selling Pegasus mail support (and manuals in former times). So, what do we conclude? Freeware is being killed by Open Source? Is Thunderbird the villain here?"

enos (627034) writes "Peter Gutmann describes the consequences of Vista's DRM including the intentional crippling of functionality, unnecessary burdens on hardware manufacturers as well as unintended side effects. For example, Vista automatically and silently reduces the quality of audio and video on untrusted devices when "premium" content is present. This can have life threatening consequences when used in medical imaging where the compression artifacts can be misinterpreted."

Anthony Boyd writes "A representative for the VBulletin software product has revoked the license from a site simply because he found the material objectionable. He initally claimed it was due to violation of law until people started quoting the law to him. Then he said they revoked the license because it violated some "morality" clause in the VBulletin license — but people looking at it are unable to find such a clause. What do you think? Was this capricious or reasonable? Is it justified in law? As a VBulletin customer, how secure do you feel about your license?"